My 24 year old Dawes Mean Street has a sort of brushed stainless handlebar. For a while now there have been small flecks of rust, blemishes really, showing. Efforts to remove them with Brasso, Dura-Glit, silver polish etc have failed to make any significant improvement. Has anyone a sure-fire remedy to get rid of these blemishes?
My suspicion is that they are brushed chrome plate (over regular steel), rather than brushed stainless.
If that is the case then the problem stems from the fact that chrome plating is slightly porous. Over time, water penetrates, and rusts the steel underneath, which expands as it transforms into iron oxide, and spalls the chrome plating.
There is no good solution to this, short of taking the item to a platers and having it redone. If you want to go that route, I believe high quality chrome plating is applied with a layer of copper underneath, which is impervious, and so prevents the problem occurring.